1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a printing device such as a printing or copying system, which is adapted for being coupled to a finishing device for further processing of a printed image-receiving member. Furthermore, the present invention is related to a printing apparatus including such printing device and such finishing device. Examples of further processing at the finishing device are the forming of booklets, trimming or cutting the printed image-receiving member into image-receiving member units, stapling, punching, folding or sorting of the printed image-receiving member units. The image-receiving member units are, for example, sheets or pages cut from an image-receiving member web.
2. Description of Background Art
In general, a finishing device is a separate module that is coupled to the printing device. To this end, the printing device comprises an output unit for outputting a printed image-receiving sheet to the finishing device when the finishing device is arranged at the printing device.
During further processing of the printed image-receiving sheet, an error might occur at the finishing device. This error has to be signalled to the printing device in order to interrupt the current printing and initiate a recovery process.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,588,472 discloses a printing device and a finishing device having a smart interface for connecting the printing device and the finishing device, thereby extending the control of the printing device to the finishing device. When an error occurs in the finishing device, the kind or location of the error is known to the printing device. A control unit of the printing device can, for example, perform a finisher error recovery procedure, wherein an error message is displayed to the user of the printing device indicating the position of the error as well as instructions on how to recover. For example, when a number of printed sheets are stuck inside the finishing device, the user can be requested to remove the sheets, and afterwards, these sheets are printed again.
However, there are finishing devices which do not have a smart interface capability. In the worst case, no information is available to the printing device about the error conditions of an external finishing device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,993 discloses a printing device comprising an output unit for outputting a printed image-receiving sheet to a finishing device arranged at the printing device. The finisher is arranged for communicating an error signal originating from a detector in the finishing section to the printer control unit. The printer control unit is configured to control a finisher error recovery procedure after the reception of information that an error has occurred in the finisher section. The finisher error recovery procedure comprises the steps of outputting an error message to the user display such that all sheets in the finisher path shall be removed and the printing job shall be resumed.
EP 0 478 349 A2 discloses a printing device comprising a control unit performing a recovery procedure after the occurrence of an error. Defective copies have to be purged before the respective copy set is completed.
U.S. Application Publication No. 2007/0166055 discloses a printing apparatus with an attached finisher. An interface is provided to communicate an error in the finishing device to a control unit of the apparatus and to display an error or job cancel message on a user display.